Food For Thought...

Well, I have done my study of facebook games and have established about 10 different types and I think the reason that they are so popular is the unconscienceness of doing something that seems real, even though of course it is not perfect, it has the basic rhythm of life and that of which is probably the core essence, time.

So, I was wondering what it would be like if UO added a system that worked like these games did. Not the part where it tells you to tell all your friends and not the part where it asks you for money but the part that is based on time.

I think it could be implemented easily and when I think about the systems UO currently has, they already have these factors but it is not as addicting because your chances of success are to easy.

Example: The plant system, you plant something and then you know that the next day you will need to take care of your plants. So, if you miss that whole day, you will fail and then the server will check the plants once again after another 24 hours.

The problem is that it is taking to long. What if there were certain plants that grew faster or slower. Like maybe the orange brushel could grow its' first cycle in only 6 hours so that you would have to come back 2 times during the day to take care of your plants.

Of course, different systems could adopt the same system of something taking so much time to produce. For example: Cooking, If you used a certain type of oven, like the elven oven, it could give you a time bonus, then you could collect apples from apple trees, peel the apples with a peeler, cut the apples, make dough, get a pie pan from the tinker and then cook the apple pie for say, maybe, 2 hours.

Then they could add energy to characters, who would then need to eat to refill their energy. So, then people would need to buy the apple pies but these are just examples and ideas that I thought I would throw out there. Hopefully, we could see something like this in the future.

I strongly believe there is something to what you are looking at. In it's most basic form, it boils down to a "hobby". And I think there is a big, under developed place for this, in MMOs. UO already has a start in it, with their plants system. But it could be more, much more. It can be part of a deep social system as part of city building and world trade. Unfortunately, UO as is is a poor container for what I'm talking about. That leaves more basic forms of this type of play.

Stratics Veteran

I think a lot of what you suggest falls in terms of UO under "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The fundamentals of UO (being a "real time") game are fine as they are. That doesn;t mean the "tick-based" system is a bad one though. Back, I dunno, 8, 9? years ago, a splinter board (from the original UHall) found a game called Planetarion. Fairly simple concept, every hour you got a certain amount of resources which you could then spend to build various ships, those ships could then go out and search for asteroids (resources), attack enemy systems, or defend yours or your allies systems (each action took a certain numerb of ticks (hours)).

Fun game (well up until we caught the in-game ire of t he people running the game who then used our ingame boards against us to gain access to an external password protected board we were using... long off topic story), in fact I was just thinking about how fun it was (as a resource builder type of player that I tend to be) at the time we were playing it.

But I don't think UO is a good system to try and add this style of system to.

Stratics Veteran

I strongly believe there is something to what you are looking at. In it's most basic form, it boils down to a "hobby". And I think there is a big, under developed place for this, in MMOs. UO already has a start in it, with their plants system. But it could be more, much more. It can be part of a deep social system as part of city building and world trade. Unfortunately, UO as is is a poor container for what I'm talking about. That leaves more basic forms of this type of play.

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Well , no.

Players don't want to pay a monthly fee to look after "plants" or have an argument with their significant other as to where to place a virtual table in a virtual castle.

If this is what players want, UO would be the game with over 15million subscribers.

Battle.net/WoW/Facebook will own the industry, much like how EA sports is the only game in town.

I strongly believe there is something to what you are looking at. In it's most basic form, it boils down to a "hobby". And I think there is a big, under developed place for this, in MMOs. UO already has a start in it, with their plants system. But it could be more, much more. It can be part of a deep social system as part of city building and world trade. Unfortunately, UO as is is a poor container for what I'm talking about. That leaves more basic forms of this type of play.

Click to expand...

Well , no.

Players don't want to pay a monthly fee to look after "plants" or have an argument with their significant other as to where to place a virtual table in a virtual castle.

If this is what players want, UO would be the game with over 15million subscribers.

Battle.net/WoW/Facebook will own the industry, much like how EA sports is the only game in town.

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Explain please why it would make Facebook part of the owners, but wouldn't work in an MMO. Explain also why you're lumping WoW and Battle.net in with them as the owners, but someone else can't make a run at it too.

As far as UO goes, it has lots of problems, and many have tried to explain this to people who won't even consider it any better than you evidently will.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Example: The plant system, you plant something and then you know that the next day you will need to take care of your plants. So, if you miss that whole day, you will fail and then the server will check the plants once again after another 24 hours.

Click to expand...

That plant system is regulated if you don't hold the plants in your backpack. If you put them in a beetle, for example, or in a secured container in a house, they won't pass a check. However, the only way to speed up the process would be to use fertile dirt, which is annoying. The bottom line is people sell dyes for 25k or less, so no one really seems to mind waiting over a week to grow these plants which now sell for next to nothing; some people must enjoy the process enough, heh (a week to be able to dye items is a worthy enough investment, I suppose).

I like the cooking idea, in principal. There are many existing Facebook-like games that exist in UO already though. For example, puzzles. The Lamp Post quest, the Stygian Underworld puzzles (three of them, to boot), the Arcane puzzles. All of these puzzles are like mini-games. I'm sure there are more mini-games than that, but can't think of any off the top of my head, hehe.

The problem with comparing facebook games to UO subgames is that facebook has a very large complement of people who 1) haven't played online things much 2) don't expect much 3) have click-pellet mentality.

So UO folks really wouldn't enjoy something like mafia wars, where they have to log in every hour or two in order to "check on" their jobs and properties and annoy their friends for help. However, they would enjoy dealing with in-game mafia groups and puzzles that eventually lead to a big boss that may give them an artifact or an ingredient for one.

I think the biggest difference is that most of us playing the game really want to be "moving" around and "doing" things. 95% of facebook games are "click"... wait.... "click"... wait.... "get result".... "click". You could argue crafting has that element --- but you also can go fight a lich lord while sewing. Can't do that on facebook.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy food and other things adding to our experience, but I prefer those additions to be introduced through a "mastery" kind of system, where you have to build/do things with some type of skill or knowledge to get the results you want. Instead of our current "click" and everything calculated for percentage chance without your intervention.

... Then they could add energy to characters, who would then need to eat to refill their energy. So, then people would need to buy the apple pies but these are just examples and ideas that I thought I would throw out there. Hopefully, we could see something like this in the future.

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Gee, like it used to be in the first place? When I started, stamina (swing speed) was affected by how full you were and how recently you had eaten anything. That went buh-bye long ago ... wish they would bring it back.

I think UO could definetly add the system. I remember the first time I built something, I think it was in carpentry. I don't remember what it was that I built but I do remember saying to myself, "Wow that was fast." My next thought was to kind of brush it off because who would want to sit there, for say 10 minutes.

So, the system made sense, even when I saw thousands of different items crafted and thrown into a bag but the thought would often come to me, it probably should take alot longer to make those.

But, I do understand. People like things the way they are and people are not willing to change but this system could be added and made to adopt anything we do in UO, so it would make sense to place the system so other systems could use them.

And I think you would find it to be more popular than you could imagine as long as it wasn't connected to a chain or made to the point where it was stupidly long.

But think about it. If I said to you, "I could give you a rare item that could be worth millions but you would have to wait so long to produce it." Of course you would.

So, like a piece of furniture could be added to the game that was unique. Not changing the whole system but adding to it. So, this particular piece of furniture might take a couple of steps to build and each step might take so long.

Or they could add a weapon or a piece of armour or some kind of food or a plant that causes the player to constantly think, hey i'm making something in UO and I need to get back in the game so I don't lose it.

Of course, different systems could adopt the same system of something taking so much time to produce. For example: Cooking, If you used a certain type of oven, like the elven oven, it could give you a time bonus, then you could collect apples from apple trees, peel the apples with a peeler, cut the apples, make dough, get a pie pan from the tinker and then cook the apple pie for say, maybe, 2 hours.

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2 hour skill delay for Cooking?

Isn't that 12 hours in game?

Regarding "having to eat", there was a massive outrage before when hunger was sped up. People thought they had to constantly eat (normal food) to sustain their character for whatever perceived reason (death? fatigue? delirium?) You didn't have to eat at all, made no difference, but people were mortified by the idea.

To this day, even though they nerfed hunger mere weeks after reinstating it, people still complain about enchanted apples being virtually compulsory by virtue of their widespread use. Any decision to make eating necessary (in real terms those apples are just another potion) would have to be delicately handled.

I would like to see food somehow involved in play, but done properly and without drawing the resentment of everyone.

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